Investors are pulling out of Finnish social networking firm Sulake and its teen-aimed website Habbo Hotel after revelations that Habbo was hosting illicit content.
Private equity firm 3i announced today that it had left Sulake's board and was ditching its 16 per cent stake in Habbo Hotel, a social gaming network and online …

Re: "Its spelt surely not shurely."

Re: "Its spelt surely not shurely."

Indeed you are correct in that a lone bracket is a parenthesis. But, I put it to you, how can one close a single parenthesis?

If you had opined that the poster was "missing a parenthesis," then I would certainly have been the mistaken party in this debate, yet your claim that "you have forgotten to close your parenthesis" suggests you are talking about the twin-brackets which make up a singular unit of parentheses.

Plural of chaos

Re: "Its spelt surely not shurely."

Re: "Its spelt surely not shurely."

there are times when I wonder why I bother with ElReg's comments pages. Then something like this thread comes along and I remember. Thanks all - except for the OP who completely missed the point - to you, I say "raise your game" or leave for good.

huh?

Re: huh?

Remember that it is for over-13s (there is a US federal law which uses that age limit), and international. Neither US nor UK thinking on age limits for sex are universal.

I'm one of those rare people who can remember being a teenager. No, we were not innocent. Perhaps more relevant, we were prone to lies and boasts about such things. It's as predictable as the reactions of social workers and politicians.

One more time...

I have had to say this to so many of my friends with children recently, it's getting silly. I've said it on here before as well, but here it is again:

THE INTERNET IS NOT A PLAYGROUND FOR CHILDREN. IT IS NOT A SAFE PLACE TO LET YOUR CHILDREN EXPLORE ON THEIR OWN. IT IS NOT YOUR BABYSITTER. SUPERVISE YOUR OFFSPRING WHENEVER THEY USE AN INTERNET CONNECTED DEVICE.

That all said, the idea of sites for kids is nice, but as always with these things, it's ruined by arseholes.

Re: One more time...

Re: One more time...

"I believe in explain and trust rather than tether and oppress."

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, it's not my own children I don't trust. However, even the most sensible and level-headed of people (yes, I'm including adults here as well) can be coerced in to doing something silly and even potentially dangerous.

Re: One more time...

and your point is what exactly? It would appear this is a moderated site targeted at children between the ages of 13 - 18, surely the moderators should have stopped much of the 'grooming' activity. Assuming the reports on the news are correct the investors are quite sensibly removing their investment as this site appears to be a major conduit for grooming of minors.

Re: One more time...

"But you should be able to trust your children to tell you when something is not quite right. This way they will turn into adults who won't be coerced into doing something silly."

Yes, just like we expect sensible adults to report to their bank / police when they have their personal information stolen by scammers, or hand it over voluntarily to phishers. Turns out they don't always do that. Who knew?

As per usual

The normal line of blame the website, how about the lazy parents actually monitor what their children are doing. As a responsible parent you would then be able to hit that report inappropriate content button straight away rather than expecting the system to try and spot it.

Re: As per usual

Re: As per usual

Hardly gonna market themselves as not safe, but again as a parent my definition of safe and there's differ very widely I should imagine. It still comes down to parents, my daughters is old enough for a faceb account according to their terms and conditions, she isn't old enough for one by mine and when she does get one until she is 16 she wont be using it unsupervised.

Political capital gained from ditching stake is worth it

'Pulling out'

So 3i and Balderton give up their seats on the board, fair enough, but how do they 'pull out' their ownership of the company? Do they write off the investment and just give up their stock, or can they force Sulake to somehow buy back their shares?

The thing is though, they posed as a 13 year old girl, right? Now I know everyone wants to view the world through rose tinted glasses, but I can’t imagine any other responses from a 13 year old boy that wouldn’t be “sexual and vulgar”. What do they expect from putting a bunch of teenagers together?

Sure, there’s paedophiles. There’s paedophiles everywhere on the internet. But kids are told time and time again about the whole talking to strangers business and meeting people off the internet. Does it stop them? No. Did it stop them kids getting killed from meeting people they met on Facebook? No.

I mean, shit, maybe it’s not necessarily a problem with the service and its moderation. From what I remember, the reporting system on Habbo was actually one of the best I’ve seen (Sulake didn’t take kindly to the “scripting” scene) – easy for kids to use and every “Call for Help” (as they call it) was responded to within minutes. Clear instructions provided for what to do if someone engaged in this behaviour with you.

If kids aren’t using the tools given to them, or acting on the knowledge drilled into them in school, then maybe that’s a failure that should be pointed somewhere else.

Kinda feel bad for Sulake. Habbo was probably been hemorrhaging users for a while. This’ll probably be one of the final nails in the coffin.

"Private equity firm 3i announced today that it had left Sulake's board and was ditching its 16 per cent stake in Habbo Hotel, stating that they felt that the only responsible action to take when discovering 13 year old kids surrounded by peadophiles was to run away as fast as they could."